Taming a Tiger
by Snowlia
Summary: For a decade I had wandered the country, looking for something, anything that would ease my pain and pull me from this hell in which I suffered. I found her in a diner in Philadelphia, the middle of Yankee Territory. Jasper/Alice


In all of my experiences in this world I would have to say that the feeling I held at that particular moment in time was one of the worst feelings one could ever experience. The feeling of numb oblivion, being alone, no one to turn to and no where to go. I put one foot in front of the other and continued down the worn sidewalk. I was at my end and I didn't know why I kept on going at all. In a sense I did, I couldn't stop. It would never end, this torturous life, if you could call it that, of mine. Vampires were never relieved with the slumber of death, our kind was damned to walk this earth forever for sins we hadn't committed. At least I never believed I had deserved this. Before I was bitten I had never done anything I felt went against The Good Lord. Never did I lay a hand on a woman, never did I disrespect my parents, never did I slack on my chores and in the heat of battle never did I desert my brothers in arms. I hadn't deserved the curse Maria has laid upon me.

No one deserved the vampire's venom and yet I had inflicted that unforgivable curse upon more then I would ever be able to remember. When I had done such things I had already been damned, nothing to lose, I always told myself. Now I wasn't so sure. I relished in the kill, it was an amazing feeling. The power to take another's life away and the sweet scent of blood was overpowering. For the first seven decades of my new 'life' I had everything I could want. My powers over emotions had given me no competition for whatever I faced. All vampires in the south, who knew anything, knew to fear me. Though she would never admit it, my own creator, Maria herself, had feared me. I was monster in the eyes of the monster that had created me. Only when I could feel her fear did I panic.

For a while I had been losing my edge. My 'gift' had kept me surrounded with others hate, pain and instinctual cravings and I had been satisfied with it for a long while. A sadistic beast surrounded by the blood I so craved. Upon my high throne my kingdom was a mass of chaos and fear, as it should be. Recently the fear had begun to get to me. Somewhere deep down I was still there, the real me, and the fear of the innocent had pierced through the murderous beast's shell and reached me. It was horrible feeling, my prey shrieking and their fear consuming me; knowing I were the cause of their pain. When Maria feared me I began to go numb. I didn't want my blood drenched kingdom anymore. So I abandoned it with Peter and Charlotte, others of my kind who no longer wanted to live in chaos and war. At least they were happy…but I wasn't. They kept me with them and were kinder to me then I had ever experienced, there was no fighting or intimidation to keep us together, nothing at all. I was still unhappy. My prey still feared me and their pain became mine every time I had to feed. So I left.

Now here I was, trudging meaninglessly down a sidewalk in a city I didn't even know the name of. I paused and looked up through the golden hair that insisted on covering my eyes, it did help to hide my red irises from the casual passerby; I didn't raise suspicion. I raised my eyebrows in about as much emotion as I could muster in my current state as I saw the few signs around me telling me I was indeed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. _Yankee territory _I smiled grimly as I thought of how I raised my gun and risked my life against the North and now here I was. Decades after the lost war and no one in this whole city couldn't care less about all the men I had seen die and suffer, even the ones who had fought for their own side. I shook my head weakly at how much humans took for granted.

It was in shaking my head I realized why the busy city of Philadelphia was not quite as busy as I would have originally presumed, a steady down pour had begun and most had taken cover in the nearest shop. I cocked my head at the sky for a moment. The grey clouds swirled above hiding the afternoon sun from my pail skin. I wasn't accustom to walking during the day, even when I was protected from the sun hitting my skin and exposing me for what I truly was. With a mild snarl at the weather I slipped into a diner so as not to attract unwanted attention.

Inside it was mildly crowded with others seeking to escape the unfavorable conditions outside. People laughed and talked loudly to one another and I was easily lost among the light and friendly cacophony of noise and people. A curvy blonde hostess looked up at once however. Her eyes went wide as soon as she saw me. I felt her emotions quiver with lust, it didn't surprise me; to her and the rest of humanity I was beautiful. In saying that I'm not being arrogant or conceded, it's a simple fact of life. It's like placing a race horse amongst a flock of sheep. The sheep aren't ugly but beside the superior species they are forgotten. Not that I'd ever heard of a sheep lusting for a horse though…or of a horse ever thirsting for a sheep's blood. Perhaps more like a white wolf amongst sheep, blending in yet standing out at the same time, waiting for one to turn its back so as to strike.

"Can I get you something honey?" she smiled in a feminine and what I was sure was meant to be seductive sort of way at me. Perhaps that might have worked, on another sheep. I smiled a very small smile back at her and I felt her practically fall apart inside. I was use to dealing with woman, to easily luring them to be my next meal or making them one of my warriors. They were too easy. They lusted for me and I could throw that back at them ten fold until they couldn't stand it. A few kisses later and they were dead or damned, either way it was all over. A chivalrous part of me still lived on somewhere deep down and whatever I did and always made sure they didn't suffer any more then absolutely necessary. The ones I killed never felt anything at all, I was always fast, torture had never faired well with me, especially to a lady.

Before I parted my lips in response her eyes widened again "You have beautiful eyes…" her voice was breathy and distant as if she wasn't really talking to me. Her statement took me a bit by surprise but it confirmed what I had already been thinking. She would be my next meal, yes it was only humane. She had just complimented vampire on his red irises which were halfway dark with hunger. I would make death quick for her; make her happy before she left her body. I couldn't say the same for the next man who came in with indecent thoughts for her. This was my sad reasoning, trying to convince myself that I wasn't the monster I knew I truly was. It would be easy. I would ask her to dinner; she would say yes of course, she was yearning for me as I stood before her. I had done this far too many times to count, all I had to do was kiss her a few times then while she was wrapped up in her feminine thoughts it was a quick break of the neck and she would never feel any pain.

I opened my mouth to form the question; my mouth beginning to water at the thought of feeding; my mind withering at it. As soon as the diner air hit my tongue all of my 'dinner plans' were at once lost. A refreshingly sweet and familiar scent struck me at once. Vampire. Was I trespassing on someone's territory? Certainly I could dispose of any northern vampire with ease, I wasn't afraid, only surprised. I hoped I wouldn't have to kill two tonight though; I wasn't much in a battling mood. I turned and there she was. I was rather tall and well use to looking down at others but she was shorter then normal standards. I briefly acknowledged her size and short dark hair but before any more of her features could stick in my mind I saw her eyes.

She wasn't a vampire, she couldn't be. I was stunned. All signs pointed to vampire, her features, the way she moved, her scent; all but her eyes were of my kind. Where rubies should have been were coins of gold. My mind flew to try to find a possible explanation for the damned woman with golden eyes that stood before me. In a few graceful lopes she was in front of me staring up at me, her emotions were so twisted and excited I couldn't keep up with any of it. She was horrifying. A shiver ran down my spin as I tried to decipher any meaning at all for anything about her; her strange eyes, her jostling emotions or the smile that played across her thin lips. It was unnerving, that smile of hers, unnatural. I was use to vampire smiles, gentle on the mouth but with the twinge of malice in their eyes. Her smile and her eyes held no sinister thoughts; she was smiling like…a human.

My first thought was to get out of there, to put as much distance between this demonic woman and myself as possible. My second thought was that I never run. At least out of fear I never run. She stopped a few feet before me and her smile grew. I tried to calm myself by trying to sort out her emotions, a common task. Some I recognized with ease, fear and uncertainty was there but it swirled with other things I wasn't as accustom to. There was defiantly joy, so raw of an emotion that it made me feel a bit queasy being so close to her.

"You've kept me waiting a long time." As soon as she spoke everything else was forgotten. The words were hardly more then a wind blowing through a tree but it was the only sound I heard. It was like when I first tasted her scent only now all was forgotten in a surprisingly pleasant way. Her voice was light airy and I was sure that if breathing was still a necessity I would have had to remind myself to do so. Her fear began to take over her other emotions as I didn't react at first. Her face however remained the same, giving no clue to the battle within her at the moment.

"Sorry ma'am." I tipped my head a bit out of courtesy and her fear lessened. I wasn't exactly sure what I was apologizing for. She reached out and took my hand in hers, only being able to grasp my fingers with her tiny palm. A ripple shot through my body at her touch. Normally I would have recoiled at her gesture of familiarity but something stopped me and let myself be handled by her.

"Is she with you?" the hostess's less-then-friendly tone brought me back to reality, reminding me of where I was. I turned back to her, unsure what to say.

"Yes, I am. I already have a table," she grinned without looking at me again and led me further into the diner, past the counter at which she had been seated and past the other customers until we arrived at a dark booth in the back. My thoughts were unclear and I could barely understand my own emotions at that moment, hers were an enigma entirely.

She pulled me into the booth and took the seat across from me, her elbows on the table and her hands folded over one another to hold up her chin. I didn't know how long we sat like that, neither saying anything, just trying to stare down the other. Looking for an answer to a question neither of us could quite grasp. Never did my eyes stray from hers, taking in those golden irises and still not completely realizing that it was real, that she was actually there and staring back at the red and black tint of my own with just as many questions. Finally that whisper of a voice resounded again bringing me back to the diner once more. What was happening to me? I had never drifted off in such a manner, not since I had been human.

"What's your name?"

"Shouldn't you all ready know?" I shot back almost subconsciously. "You said you were waiting for me."

Her anxiety returned and remorse shot through me. Gently I nudged her mentally with a tad of confidence then I caught myself, shocked. I couldn't remember the last time I had used my abilities to aid someone else. To give them joy or confidence, or make them feel better in any way. I narrowed my eyes at the pixie-like girl before me with distrust, though her eyes seemed a bit brighter from my intervention. I couldn't understand what she was doing to me, and then the only possible option was suddenly clear. She had extra abilities too, and she was using them against me. I was suddenly disgusted that I had assisted her with my powers and now she was lashing me with her own.

"I'm sorry I sprung myself on you like this. I have been waiting for you for a while, as long as I can remember actually. My name is Alice." I didn't respond, just studied her, or more accurately, her emotions. Excitement, anxiety, uncertainty, relief, embarrassment, sorrow, joy and other emotions I couldn't even recognize all fought for a place in her head. "And you're Jasper," she said after a pause, she breathed my name as if she believed she said it too loud I would disappear. I was comforted a bit in knowing she too didn't quite view our meeting as reality, like we were in some sort of dream where things could make perfect sense yet we didn't understand them at all.

"If you knew my name why did you ask?" I was surprised at how casual my voice sounded.

"You all ready seemed…apprehensive of me and I didn't want to scare you off any more," she smiled tauntingly and calmed at my cooperativeness.

"I'm not going anywhere," I stated out loud my own emotions, something I rarely did. It was true enough though, I knew I couldn't have run that first moment I saw her, I couldn't leave now and didn't know if I ever could. Again I tried to understand where these feelings were coming from, it felt like going against the grain for me not to understand my own emotions. Again my mind drifted back to my original theory, her powers. I formed the words in my mind but was distracted as her emotions gave another twist and quiver at my original words. Another thing I wasn't use to was a person's feelings varying, twisting and changing every time I spoke when I wasn't altering them myself. Throwing it one way or another by the slightest thing I did. I'd had somewhat this sort of power over others before, but not like this. I recomposed myself once more. "You have an extra ability as well." It wasn't a question.

Her eyes widened at my assumption, showing more of her liquid topaz eyes then I could hardly handle, I dropped my gaze to her lips. Those eyes made me feel weak, like she was above me for something she did or could do that I could not. Another feeling and deeper meaning I couldn't understand. This growing sense of ignorance was not fairing well with me. I clenched my fist in aggravation on the table, instantly regretting so as she mentally shied away from my anger. "Yes I do have…an extra ability as you called it. I see the future." My gaze locked swiftly with hers once more and I felt her anticipation, waiting to see my reaction. It was all I could to keep the look of shock off my face. Seeing the future would have no effect on my emotions or thoughts. She stared me straight on at first but she was fighting to hold it there and eventually lost as she lowered her eyes to a salt shaker sitting on the table between us.

"Is…is that all?" I managed, still refusing to believe that whatever was happening to me was internal and my own problem, having nothing to do with her.

She whipped her head back up with a new ferocity in her eyes "What do you mean is that all?" she demanded indignantly. I felt bad for insulting her gift in such a way but I had to know. Though after I heard her response I wished I hadn't, she had nothing to do with my sudden confusion, at least not on purpose. Possibly it was her emotions resounding on me, that happened quite often and I believed I felt somewhat the same thing now, only it was different.

"Nothing, I didn't mean it as an insult, I apologize."

She fluttered. "Oh no, it's all right. You said 'extra ability, _as well', _do you, I mean, can you…" she trailed off unsure of how to word the question.

"Yes," I drawled out the word slowly, a bit hesitant to expose myself like that to her just yet. "But why wouldn't you know that too? Or are you just trying not to scare me again?" I teased her gently.

"I…" she was suddenly more uncertain than anything else. "I guess I should explain everything…" She seemed to compose herself mentally for a moment. She tried and failed to meet my eyes and settled on watching the salt shaker and all of its inanimate friends instead. "I can't remember being human. Not even fleeting moments of it, I can't remember anything at all, except my name and not even my whole name at that. Actually I don't even have any conformation that Alice is my name. It may be someone else's name that I just hung onto through my change. I woke about eight years ago, alone. I would have panicked but then I had my first vision." A quieter emotion dwelling in her escalated over the others, embarrassment. She looked up fleetingly to gauge my expression. "It was of you," she whispered and I felt a chill race through me, though I can't say it was entirely unpleasant.

"Me?" she nodded. "Why-"

She held up her hand, cutting me off, "Wait…yes I had my first vision of you. I didn't know who you were or why I was seeing you but…I was," she laughed a bit nervously before continuing "From then on I saw you all the time, sometimes daily, sometimes weekly and sometimes not for months. I had other visions as well. It took me a while to figure out how they worked; whenever a decision is made I can see the outcome. That's why you never made sense. I won a lot of money off of gambling and games of chance because I could see the outcome of my choices, I would see if there would be trouble where I was going after I decided to go there, it worked in such a way that I didn't have just random visions, there was a pattern. For the longest time there was no pattern with you, I just had miscellaneous visions of you, I supposed it was whenever you made a decision, but again I couldn't see how that was important to me," she looked back up to me, I had stopped breathing. I inhaled subtly to keep up my human charade though I doubted any one was paying attention to a stranger's breath intake. "Then I had another vision. Jasper, you have to come with me."

I raised an eyebrow, "Where?" I asked suspiciously.

She bit her lip and I stared at her as I fought back her uncertainty. "I don't know," she was exasperated with herself.

"So, you want me to come with you, but you don't know where?" She nodded and I felt a new wave of hopelessness wash over me. She desperately needed to control her emotions.

"Why?"

"I had a vision," she smiled apologetically at me, as if embarrassed all of her statements began in the same manor. "It was of us with others like me and y-." she cut herself off as she looked up to meet my eyes again. She was upset and nervous about something. Like she had miscalculated or misunderstood something.

"What do you mean like you and I?" I couldn't bring myself to say 'us'.

"Well, like me I suppose," her disappointment made me want to calm her further. She was disappointed in _me_. That bothered me in many ways. First of all she had no right to be disappointed in me, I had known her less then an hour; she had no right to judge me. There was a quieter part of me that fought to have a say in this but I pushed it down as well as I could. That part of me was in agony with her being unhappy with me in any way.

I raked my mind for what she could be talking about. What made her different then me, different then any other vampire? Well, there were plenty of things that made her different, these emotions she held and other things I couldn't quite place. The answer was obvious once I calmed myself down enough to think clearly.

"Your eyes." Those golden topaz irises that had so startled me when I had first seen her. She nodded and met my gaze again. This time I realized she wasn't looking at _me_ exactly, but at my eyes. "Why are yours gold?"

"Because I don't feed off of humans." The statement was incomprehensible. There was no possible way it could be done. Vampires fed off of humans. It was the way it was, the way it always had been and the way it always will be. I searched her mind for any trace of a lie, a hint that she was leading me on, but there was none. She wasn't lying.

She laughed softly, a sound that made my own emotions quake. "That's most people's reaction," I realized I had not been able to contain my shock and it had leaked onto my physical features. Embarrassed I tried to regain my apathetic composure and she giggled again.

"What?" I demanded a bit harsher then all together necessary.

She shook her head and her short hair rested across her face "Nothing," she clamped a hand over her mouth so as to stop her giggling. I gave her a moment to calm herself back down and I resisted giving any aid this time. "Yes, I only drink from animals."

"I didn't know that was possible."

"Yes. It's not the common way but I see it as the better way. We were human once too, I don't think it's right to kill them," she was very passionate about this. "Surviving off of animals causes the gold eye coloration. I'm not sure why, but…" she shrugged in uncertainty. So that's why she had felt so much disappointment towards me. I wasn't sure what exactly her visions had shown her but it was obvious she had expected another gold-eye like herself. Gold-eye, the term leapt to my brain. I had heard it before. Maria had used it. It was an insult, she hadn't used it often but when a warrior was particularly weak or hesitant she called them gold-eyed. I highly doubt she had known what that statement meant but it had obviously derived from these vampires who didn't hunt humans, something I would have seen as weak hardly a decade ago. I had forgotten the old saying in her presence though I was partly thankful that my view of her wasn't tainted by the worthlessness usually associated with the term.

"You thought I'd be a gold-eye too." Obviously the term 'gold-eye' amused her, I felt the edges of my mouth twitch in a smile.

"Well, yes. I did think you'd be a…'gold eye' as well; but it's Ok!" she rushed on in excitement. "I can help you!"

Her final statement bothered me. Help me…what exactly did that entitle? I knew this wouldn't be easy, I wasn't even sure if I wanted to change anything. Well, a stubborn part of me, the part that Maria had corrupted, didn't want to change. The rest of me screamed in agony to get away from this hell of emotions in any way necessary. For a moment I deliberated the options. I could stick to what I was doing, wandering around aimlessly in a hell made of fear, but I would still be my own person. I would be alone but in my own element. After all, fear and hate were what made up my meager existence. Or I could take a fleeting chance, handing over that meager existence to an inexperienced young vampiress who hardly knew what she herself was doing, let alone handling a battle scarred southern warrior. Why should I run off with this meek 'gold-eye'? What made her think I would just hand over my life to her and hope she could handle it?

I met her eyes again, set on asking her these questions instead of asking myself, but I stopped. She looked back at me impassively but I knew what she was feeling all the same. She was hopeful, almost nothing besides the pure hope that I would choose her. That I would take my chances and she was desperate to prove she could handle anything. A lock of black hair fell innocently across her face and as I watched her brush it back impatiently I knew that from the moment I had first seen her, there had been only one choice.

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End file.
